Town boss Mick McCarthy says new QPR manager Ian Holloway is more than just the joker he is sometimes portrayed to be and expects the West Londoners to be “breathing fire and brimstone” after beating Norwich City 2-1 in the first game of his second spell in charge at Loftus Road last week.
McCarthy says he and the man widely known as Ollie are long-time friends as well as rivals: "We do get on well and we have crossed swords but only over football and playing and it’s never gone any further than just on the sidelines, and not even that really.
"We get on very, very well, I think it’s nice to have a bit of mutual respect for the job each of us have done and do, and I know they’ll be coming here breathing fire and brimstone having beaten Norwich last week. It’ll be a tough game.”
McCarthy believes Holloway’s unique approach to post-match interviews and punditry mean his skills as a manager can sometimes be undervalued.
"Without any shadow of a doubt he’s better than that,” he said. "He’s deadly serious about his football, he loves his football, you can see how enthusiastic he is about it.
"His teams are well coached and well organised and he’s a good manager, who seems to get the best out of people.
"We played Millwall when it was his first game and they beat us 1-0 but they absolutely battered us.
"OK, we’d been to Preston, we’d played in the FA Cup on the Tuesday night and come back here at 4am, but he got a great response when he went in there.
"And I think everywhere he certainly gets a response out of them and his teams are really competitive.”
Holloway, who took over at QPR following Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s departure earlier in the month, will have been given a lift by last week’s victory over the Canaries, as McCarthy was when the Blues won at Birmingham in his first match as Town boss four years ago before coming back to earth soon afterwards.
He recalled: "Yes, we lost 5-0 at Crystal Palace [Holloway’s first game in charge of the Eagles]. That was my second game in charge, it’s his second on Saturday!
"I got a real boost from [the Birmingham match] but I didn’t from my second game. Let’s hope that’s the case with us and QPR.”
While McCarthy would love to inflict a reciprocal second-game 5-0 hammering on his old friend, he’s not anticipating a similarly emphatic result.
"Far from it, hoping,” he added. "Hoping if history repeats itself, you have a good result in your first game and you get beaten in your next one 5-0, but I doubt that’ll be the case somehow.
"I don’t think that QPR were in as parlous a state as we were in terms of being bottom of the league with seven points and the players that they’ve got. I look at the team that played last week and they’ve got good players.”